Radio Amateur Among International Space Station Crew Returning to Earth this Week

Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold, KE5DAU, will join Expedition 56 Commander Drew Feustel and Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyev on an October 4 return voyage to Earth after more than about 6 months in space. They will travel in a Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft heading for a parachute-assisted landing on the Kazakh Steppe some 3 hours later.

The crew is completing a 197-day mission.

At an October 3 change-of-command ceremony, Feustel will formally hand over command of the ISS to crewmate Alexander Gerst, KF5ONO, of the European Space Agency. Gerst, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, KG5TMT, and Sergey Prokopyev will hold down the fort for a week until for one week until Nick Hague, KG5TMV, and Alexey Ovchinin launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a 6-hour journey to the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft, to round out the five-person Expedition 57.